'57 Chevy Redux

I don't mean to repeat myself here in this blog, but I could not resist this photograph. Last week's Vintage Photo Friday picture of my father's 1957 yellow Chevy was in black & white. I just found this picture of the same car in full-on color, towing our matching yellow E-Z Camper trailer.

The E-Z Camper opened up and looked like a tent on the base of the trailer. Each side "wing" was about the size of a double bed, my mom and dad slept on one side and my sister Cathy and I slept on the other, in sleeping bags. You can see a propane tank installed near the hitch (above) that was hooked up to a Coleman stove inside the trailer, making it convenient for my mother to, after adding water, cook up the powdered eggs for breakfast in the morning.

My parents just loved to "camp". I hated camping because, with our family, what it really meant was driving from early morning into the night until my father could no longer keep his eyes open and/or until we reached our destination. Both of my parents smoked Pall Malls, in the car, with us in the back seat. It used to make my stomach turn. My sister Cathy and I were bored, carsick and busy telling on each other if one of us crossed the invisible line in the backseat and "accidentally" touched the other. "Quit it!" "No YOU quit it!" When our bickering got out of control, my dad would say, "Don't make me stop this car!" Hmmmm. Go ahead, Dad, stop somewhere - anywhere!

Here on the left, two years later, is the dreaded 1959 blue Chevy station wagon with matching blue E-Z Camper. No doubt about it, my dad was a stylin' Chevy man.

When my grandparents moved to Phoenix, AZ in 1960, their home became our annual destination for the Christmas holidays. It was bitter-sweet. I loved my grandparents and loved to visit with them; I just hated the method of transportation. I saw a lot of America whizzing by us as we traveled from Grayslake, IL along Route 66 to Phoenix, year after year, smokin' the entire way. "See the USA in your Chevrolet...."

Vintage Photo Friday - 1957

Grayslake, Il. The very tall, dark-haired woman is my mother, Elizabeth McDermott. The dark-haired girl is my sister Cathy and that's me with the blonde hair. My mother was wearing a red blazer and red pumps, looking very sharp. Cathy and I are grasping bouquets of flowers that were recently picked from our garden. I'm not sure what the occasion was, I suspect it had something to do with church.

The real star of this photo is my dad's yellow 1957 Chevy. I think this model is called a Bel-Air, but I'm not sure. I found some information online:

Chevy advertised it's '57 as "Sweet, Smooth and Sassy! Chevy goes one better for '57 with a daring new departure in design (looks longer and lower, and it is!), exclusive new Turboglide automatic transmission with triple turbines, a new V-8 and a bumper crop of new ideas including fuel injection!" said one ad. "You'll love Chevrolet's new light-touch driving! You'll never put hand and foot to a car so quick, smooth and easy to control - a light touch does it, Chevy's solid on the road - and that goes for the way it's put together, too!" said another.

The new 1957 Chevrolet was fresher and friskier, from its own special look to its new Ramjet fuel injection. It was the development of fuel injection on the Corvette and the 1957 Chevrolet that prompted Chevy to claim an industry first in that famous ad headline "1 h.p. per cubic inch". In the United States all automobile engineers wanted to achieve the magic milestone of "One horsepower from every cubic inch of engine displacement".

My dad LOVED that car. It was our last sedan - after this car it was a succession of Chevy station wagons. I hated those things.